Tag Archives: Personal Coaching

After much waiting the book, Trust Your Next Step, has finally launched and is on the bookshelves. It has been a whirlwind month and I finally feel I have a moment to breathe. The support and encouragement from my friends and community has been overwhelming – I truly feel the love and it was unexpected.

For much of the last 17 years I have built and run my business largely online. Marketing the book has been different in a few ways and I’d like to share a few tidbits with you.

Amazon is a different beast. As an author they have been incredibly easy to work with and helpful as I learn the ropes. However, unlike online sales through my website, I don’t know how many books I’ve sold until the publisher sends my royalty check in October!

Making friends with book buyers at local bookstores is fun. An exercise in who do I know that can introduce me to who I want to know.

Big differences in being a “local” author and self-publishing vs working with a publisher. Definitely are advantages and disadvantages to both. I choose to play with the big boys and not be a local author. So far that has not always worked in my favor at local bookstores.

I now know a lot more about negotiating with publishers and will do some things differently next time. Who knows a literary agent?

There is a world of ‘authors’, and there are folks who write books to grow their business and use their books as business cards. Not all of these books are well written, yet the purpose and the intention of the book is clear, it’s to support an overall structure and scalability of a business. Which am I and how do I show up has been a question I’m asking myself.

A month has passed and I’ve already done several things I will do differently next time. I won’t call them mistakes, just lessons I’ve learned about myself, what I want, and how I choose to show up and serve others in the world.

Introspection

As I write this I feel incredibly introspective as I mull where I stand and how I serve others. How big am I playing? Am I being true to myself? Could I, should I, have been more vulnerable in the book? How far am I going to push myself on this next book? Yes, I have started the next book – which takes chapter five, “The Stuff You’ve Got to Work With”, to a much deeper level.

I did my first book reading at a church. Which awes me. A few short years ago I not only didn’t go to church, but I had a hard time believing in God and struggled with organized religion. I had such a charge around all of it – of course I should have known all that “charge” was there for a reason. Exploring my truths about religion vs spirituality has been a big part of my journey the last six years. I now see that where I squirm the most is where the most reward is. Perhaps where I am supposed to be…

With that said, where are you squirming the most? Where are you staying within the boundaries set by others? Where are you not seeing the opportunity that most certainly surrounds you? Why are you not trusting yourself?

5 Signs You Are Not Genuinely Committed Even when you think you really are

I know first-hand how frustrating it can be when I feel like I’ve been working incredibly hard on something, especially for a measurable period of time, and I’m not achieving my goal.

Now that I’ve been around the block a few times I know what to look for. More often than not I’ll find it’s because I haven’t committed to it, truly. We think we are committed because we say our goal and may take a few actions here and there, but we really aren’t and it can be easy to fool ourselves if we’re not on alert for it. Lack of commitment is a sneaky slope if you’re not watching…..

Here are five signs that you are not genuinely committed to achieving your goals:

It doesn’t show up in your calendar. What’s important to you and the life you want to build has to show up in your calendar. And yes, you must make a commitment to follow your calendar too. In this week’s Fresh Tracks show our best-selling authors Ron and Scott share in-depth information on why this seemingly simple act is the foundation to creating a life of growth and balance. You want to be in better shape? Write a book? Make more money? Tasks leading directly to those goals should be in your calendar and followed without question.

You let distractions sidetrack you. One of the biggest gifts I share with my coaching clients is helping them stay focused on their goals. There are often so many options and directions to go when creating and growing, and one easy and common way to avoid fear is to go ‘sideways’ rather than forward. The action itself may be new to you, but it’s not moving you towards your goal.

You cannot take an inventory of what you’ve put into your commitment. You haven’t invested in it. You want to be a writer and haven’t written a word in over 20 years? Interested in starting a business? Have you attended any training’s? Workshops? Invested in a website or any materials you need? Have you managed to find money for cars and vacations? Even measuring your time can be an inventory of your commitment.

Have a contingency plan. If you have a back door plan you are not committed. Here is an example of having a contingency plan that I often see often with my clients. They have the intention to start a business, yet they are looking for a job at the same time. They spend their spare time scrolling though job boards and the classifieds “just in case” something good pops up.

When you do this you do not realize you have unconsciously not fully committed to your business 100 percent. AND, because what you focus on expands, you are focusing on two outcomes; starting a business or getting a new job. When you do this you are planting conflicting seeds and end up sabotaging yourself and struggling with both outcomes.

Not sacrificing for it. It is true for anything you want to bring new into your life, you have to let something go, usually of lower value, to to make room for it. For example, you may need to sacrifice donuts for breakfast and chocolate cake for lunch if you have a goal to lose weight. You want to write a book or start a business, you may have to sacrifice time in front of the television or reading novels. You have to create space for the new.

Commitment is not about dabbling in your dreams or playing a game just because you can. The time to commit is when you are unequivocally ready to bring your dreams to reality and your behaviors should reflect your new outcomes. Don’t be fooled by thinking you are committing when you really aren’t.

Have you been talking about accomplishing a goal for a long time yet not getting there? Are you ready to discover more about creating your life with intention and purpose? I encourage you to step into the Your Dream Life free training and learn the 7 steps to creating Your Dream Life now!

Expect to Fail on Your Road to SuccessAnd Quit Beating Yourself Up About It!

There’s a saying in skiing that if you don’t fall you’re not pushing yourself, which my dad annoyingly repeated to me over and over again as a kid on the ski slopes of Colorado. And not only did he expect me to fall, he made me get up by myself! He would walk up the mountain on his skis, stand right next to me and tell me what to do; how to untangle my legs, put my ski back on while standing sideways on the mountain, un-fog my wet goggles so I could see. I was miserable.

As a mother myself I can now see how patient he actually was, waiting for my wailing tears to stop and discouraging me from sliding down the mountain on my butt instead of skiing after the crash. He wanted me to be confident in myself so that I knew I was strong enough to get out of any situation.

Failing is a stepping stone to successThrough my tears and grumbling with each fall, my dad taught me an important lesson – falling is OK. It is, in fact, expected if you want to get better. What is also expected is that I pick myself back up, don’t rely on anyone else to bail me out, and get on my way down the mountain and not catch a ride with a snowmobile (which I only did once when I tried snowboarding).

If you’re not falling you’re not pushing yourself is an important lesson for all entrepreneurs and for anyone that is cutting Fresh Tracks. You will fall. You will fail. It is expected and in fact good because if you aren’t falling you aren’t growing. You aren’t pushing yourself and your goals are probably not stretching you enough. The last lesson, it’s up to you to pick yourself back up.

Because no one else gives a shit.

Failure is a part of your growth and is a necessary and unavoidable part of the Fresh Tracks process. As humans it’s natural to want to avoid the pain and fear involved in falling. We hide our failures from others in shame and it’s not usually talked about so we don’t see how others are falling along their way too. We see the success of others, but not the long, painful journey they endured to get there. We try at all costs to master things without experiencing the emotional roller coaster that goes along with true growth.

We can intellectualize failing and get that it’s going to happen, but when it actually happens it’s a lot harder than we can ever expect it to be and many good people end up quitting. When you are skiing and you fall you get wet. Snow gets in your gloves and down your back. It’s gets in your goggles and fogs them up. It takes time, patience, and occasionally a spare pair of gloves to swap out to continue on through the day.

How can you best endure the dips and falls of creating your Fresh Tracks? Start by developing a sense of trust in yourself – you know your next step. When you do this your intuition gets stronger and you are more able to bounce back quickly from the setbacks you are destined to experience. Worrying about failing is only going to make you feels worse, so don’t focus on it.

Trust yourself not that you won’t fail, but that you’ll keep trying. There is an old saying that ‘businesses don’t go under, the owners quit’. I share that saying with you and ask you to apply that to your goals. Trusting yourself that you won’t quit is key factor in success and is what differentiates those that do accomplish what they want in life from those that don’t.